Users of personal home computers are increasingly loading digital image files into their computer for viewing, communicating images through the Internet and printing hardcopies on personal color printers. With the introduction of the Advanced Photo System, which stores processed film in the film cartridge, there is a growing interest in being able to scan and digitize images from the stored film for use on the personal computer. Such a scanner should not only be low cost, to obtain broad acceptance as a consumer product, but also needs to be compact in size to be able to fit into a standard disk drive bay on a personal computer.
In designing a film scanner for this type of application, it is important to have a design that uses a minimum of parts, is simple to manufacture and yet creates and maintains critical, micro-precision alignment of the photosensor with the film plane in the scan gate. The design of the present invention fully meets these objectives.